(Virtual) Communities of Practice within Modern Organizations - J.UCS Special Issue

The papers of this special issue were presented or were inspired by a special track on “I-Know’03 – Third International Conference on Knowledge Management” in Graz organized by the Know-Center. The guest editor wishes to acknowledge the contributions of the authors, reviewers, and discussants which have made the special track a valuable experience for all participants. This introduction gives an overview of the topics addressed and the papers presented. We conclude with a short summary of the group work and discussions which took place. Communities of practice (CoPs) – collocated and virtual ones alike – increasingly attract attention in the business world. Bringing together employees of different organizational units and addressing business relevant topics across organizational units they play an important role for knowledge distribution and evolution within a modern organization. They can be conceptualized as strings of a web which tie organizational units closer to each other, ensure knowledge flow and support the creation of an organizational whole. However, the question about “When, where and how to employ CoPs to serve business goals?” forces an organization to consider and decide upon a number of important trade-offs – which unfortunately often are not made explicit. Examples of such trade-offs are: • knowledge centralization versus knowledge distribution • one common knowledge structure versus diverse knowledge structures • optimized knowledge distribution within one community versus making knowledge readily available to all other employees Making these trade-offs explicit is an important first step to help organizations decide on which knowledge management activities will be effective for reaching the business goals as well as will fit to the organizational culture.